


All My Power, All My Glory

by DoreyG



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Community: trope_bingo, Crimes & Criminals, F/F, Gen, Genderswap, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Leonora Snart has not had a nice life, Murder, Organized Crime, Origin Story, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 20:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3147956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonora Snart is born at exactly midnight on the 21st of December.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All My Power, All My Glory

Leonora Snart is born at exactly midnight on the 21st of December. She comes out disturbingly blue, eyes wide and aware but breath trapped in her throat as the nurses rush to understand this strange child suddenly forced into their presence.

Her mother faints the moment that she comes out, her father is across the town getting drunk in some bar that nobody will care to remember.

Several patterns are established, from day one.

 

\--

 

The van heist is planned perfectly, of course. Several days of reconnaissance, a few hacks into the company website, one or two reminders to her team of little dancing monkeys about _surveillance_ … And set. The neatest job imaginable, the smoothest ride possible. In and out so quickly that her reputation, the one she’s been so careful to cultivate with cops and criminals alike, is sure to rise several ranks in stature in one glorious hour.

“Are you worried?” They ask her on the way there, in whispers as so not to awake her much feared but rarely seen wrath, “aren’t you afraid that this might, you know, go _wrong_?”

It’s happened to others, hangs in the air unsaid.

You’re getting a bit arrogant.

You’re only one _woman_.

“It’s never gone wrong before,” she offers calmly, smoothly quirks her lips as they shift ever back from her – dancing monkeys, scared at the very whisper of pain, “it’s unlikely that that’s going to change now.”

After that, of course, it _does_ change quite suddenly and swiftly. Mask ripped off her face, guard bleeding out ever so messily on the other side, diamond abandoned so sadly in the van as her dancing monkeys scent danger and panic so dramatically that she can only roll her eyes at their scrambling backs.

She’s still not worried, though, merely… Interested.

 

\--

 

She doesn’t remember being scared when she was a kid. She knows that she should’ve been, logically – with her mother broken and brittle and her father close-mouthed and constantly full of simmering rage, but… She simply can’t recall it. A curious absence, a lack of scar that leaves her chest light and her mind sharp.

She’s glad, now, for the lack of fear.

She’s not sure how to feel about the lack of everything else, but she supposes that that’s a moot point.

 

\--

 

“You should be scared!” the dancing monkeys cry, wringing their hands and scuttling so pathetically around her, “angry! _Terrified_! We’ll be found, caught, trapped! The red streak will find us! The red streak will _end_ us! You must-“

You should.

You must.

She sprawls the loudest, most obnoxious monkey dead upon the floor. Allows the others, meek and easily swayed as opposed to bellowing and unfortunately certain, to get away with little more than a slowly arched eyebrow. They should’ve known better than to cross her, of course, but then there’s very little you can do with dancing monkeys. They’re slow, sluggish. They just don’t _get_ it.

Nobody tells her what to do. Nobody has any sort of power over her.

“You will do what I say.”

Not anymore.

“Here is the plan.”

 

\--

 

The day that Leslie was born is one of her less pleasant memories. Not because anything particularly painful happened, to her, but because of the sheer sense of oppression that still lingers like a bad taste in the mouth. Sit there, do that, listen to mother scream, don’t do that, wait for your father I’m sure that he must be on his way, be a good little twelve year old, like _pink_.

Heh.

At the end of it – when she shuffled, bored and alone, into her mother’s shared hospital room – it hardly seemed worth the effort. So many orders, so much invested, and all it resulted in was a wrinkled _thing_. Tiny, and fragile, and so very wasteful.

She cared about the value of the transaction, even if nobody else would.

 

\--

 

She’s not pretty, indifferently so, but her contact looks at her with grease in his eyes anyway. Doesn’t seem to see her deliberately short hair or several times broken nose or ever so practical clothes stretched over hard muscle. Only sees what he wants to see – a woman, an object, a _hole_.

He would say – if she pressed him, if she arched her eyebrow and challenged him in her most sugar sweet tone – that she should be grateful for the attention. _Flattered_ , for his eyes all over her like a particularly tasteless lump of meat.

“It’ll freeze _anything_.”

And she would reply – as he sneered at her, as he stood with his legs spread and his eyes squinting like the very paragon of power – that _he_ should be grateful that she hadn’t killed him earlier. Downright thrilled, that she hadn’t used a knife and taken her time.

“Please! No-!”

They don’t have the conversation. It’s quicker that way.

 

\--

 

Her mother, to her admittedly biased eye, was always seeking approval. Be it from her children, her husband, or even the spotty teenager behind the till in the shop – she could do nothing but long for validation from anybody other than herself. Is this meal alright? Do I look pretty enough? Are these cabbages the right ones? An endless litany of hopeless, desirous _want_.

Leslie, from the moment he understood what approval meant, was much the same. From mother, father, even her – he screamed for attention nearly every moment of his babyhood, hurried after them on terribly unstable legs, reached constantly outwards with ever so chubby arms. He needed in his blood, much like their mother, he _needed_ with all his pathetic little heart.

She used to sit on her small single bed across from Leslie’s creaky old crib, and absently wonder just why. She largely ignored her mother, she turned away every time her father opened his mouth.

 

\--

 

She has exactly one dress, a smart blue number that – sometimes, if she’s lucky – allows her to resemble a respectable member of society. Hair a little short, yes, set of shoulders a little too confident for the average woman borne down by the weight of society… But unremarkable, proper, almost _ladylike_ in her own special way.

She knows that she should think, even if just for a wry second, that her mother would’ve been pleasantly surprised to see her like this.

It’s a good thing that her mind is focused on the job.

She takes the tour of the museum twice, well inured to boredom after all of her long years on the job. She listens politely to the somewhat absurd story of Feels McNeely – or whatever his unimportant name is – and smiles brightly and moves like she smears sticky lipstick across her mouth every single day. She even makes friends with a kid the second time around, a scrappy creature that reminds her of what Leslie looked like at his age.

Both the diamond and the gun are ready. She watches the case, feels the weight of her weapon at her hip and allows her lips to smoothly quirk.

 

\--

 

Her mother died when she was fifteen.

‘Died’, and she’s still not much more certain than that. Possibly murder, possibly the story that her father told to anybody who would listen – a “tragic accident”. A fall down the stairs, a violent trip, a broken neck that left a hollow carcass standing where a hollow carcass used to be.

Sad, really.

She remembers watching her mother’s respectfully covered body being wheeled out of the house, the weight of Leslie plump and confused on her lap, the squeak of the stretcher under the suspicious mumble of the paramedics with their narrow eyes.

She remembers narrowing her own eyes, and starting to plan.

 

\--

 

She slips, just briefly, and they’re on her like a dog on a particularly juicy bone. She’d be annoyed, downright _livid_ to be perfectly frank, but… Well. If annoyance was in her nature she’d be nowhere near as well-known.

As it is, she’s more… Amused, than anything else. A low buzz, starting warmly in her chest and spreading through her limbs with a lazy kind of glow that makes her body relaxed and her mind calm and everything so oddly brilliant that a slow smile is spreading across her face before she even realizes it.

“Stop!” The cop, a man who vaguely reminds her of her father snapping out tight-mouthed orders in his smartly pressed uniform, yells at the top of his lungs despite that. So sweet, so passionate, so smug in the assumption that she’s going to listen to him and lay down her power and be a good little girl with her face ground into the dirt as per usual.

Yeah, _right_.

She’s never liked the term ‘cop-killer’, has pushed against the cliché of becoming one all her life, but needs must and if needs must then you might as well _enjoy_ them. She raises the gun without a second thought, squeezes her finger on the trigger with a certain amount of cool pleasure – watches the blur of _beautiful_ cold, so stunning that no human could possibly ever live up to it, arc out towards the man just like her father…

The red flash pushes him out of the way at the last moment. Takes the blast instead, crumples half to the floor with her eyes flashing in pain as the cop hisses and her gun lowers momentarily in shock. Close up, an actual person instead of a blurring intervention, she’s younger than expected – smaller, with the milk-pale face of an inveterate bookworm under her glaringly red mask

“Stop!” She cries, so very young and bright and sanctimoniously _offended_ , despite that. Forces herself up to her feet. Strong, unyielding, brave even in the face of something that has obviously injured her. For a second, just a second, it’s like staring into a mirror – peering a face that is so very almost like her own, but just a touch… _Different_.

“Shouldn’t you be at school, girlie?” She’s never cared much for mirrors, she’s never been concerned enough with her looks. She raises her gun, smoothly, and fires again.

 

\--

 

She left her childhood behind as soon as she was able. The moment another option, even if it was a life of crime and probable prison sentences, presented itself she was up and out of the door – lingering dark curls shaved off in the sink, remaining skirts left behind in the wardrobe, all other possessions packed into a rucksack slung over one shoulder.

“You will visit, won’t you?” Leslie asked anxiously, staring up at her with such wide and hopeful eyes.

“You won’t leave me here with him, right?” He continued, tugging at her sleeve with bony and needful fingers as she moved coolly out of the door.

“ _Rescue_ me from this, _Pleasepleaseplease_.”

Even then, especially then, she didn’t much care for innocents. She only stood on their front doorstep, took in a deep breath, quirked her lips ever so slowly… And walked away, without even a backwards glance.

 

\--

 

Her dancing monkeys can’t think for themselves. She’d like, if she was the type to like inconsequential things, to say that they try – but, in truth, she doesn’t think that they’re capable of even that. They’re unimaginative, uninteresting, _dumb_. They just don’t think.

A gun presses, firm and cold, against the back of her skull. She raises her hands, even faster when they fail to ask her to, and stares at the wall in front of her with cold eyes. Fury should be boiling in her gut, she knows that well enough, but… Well.

They just don’t _see_.

“Don’t turn around.”

They just _don’t_.

“We don’t want to do this anymore… _Leonora_.”

She lets them go, uncaringly, but makes a firm mental reminder to _find_ them after all this business is done. For now there are more important things, bigger fish to fry, other emotions to have than paralysing rage that’ll drag her down as surely as a stone.

She can think, well enough. She quirks a smile, grabs her gun and prepares to move. She’s smart, known, the best thief in Central City. And, with the power of frost at her fingertips, absolutely _nothing_ is going to stop her now.

 

\--

 

They underestimated her at first, of course they did. Female, daughter of a cop, with short hair and square shoulders and a face that nobody could read no matter how hard they squinted. She was a novelty, an outsider, the kind of woman who nobody paid attention to. She was the type of creature that seemed destined for being a one note joke, and absolutely nothing more.

Heh.

She stopped being a novelty, when she stole a million right out of a van crawling with guards and guns and locks so potent that a grown man could cry himself to death trying to figure them out. She stopped being an outsider, when she appeared a few months later and brought all the well-known boys of crime a drink at their very favourite bar. She stopped being the kind of woman that nobody paid attention to, when she very calmly lifted a gun and explained just how willing she was to shoot them all dead if they dared to cross her.

She’s never cared for being a one note joke. Never cared for being anything less than what she is, queen of quarrelsome pack.

 

\--

 

She grins at the guard standing so uncertain and terrified before her, actually _grins_. He wasn’t expecting her, despite all the warnings, they _never_ expect her. She’s a mystery, an outlier, the type of creature that people don’t actually believe exist. Nobody could want to steal things that much, it’s impossible. Nobody could regard human life as that irrelevant, it’s nonsensical. No _woman_ could possibly want the power that’s rightfully hers!

So very rightfully hers.

The diamond sits pretty on its plinth, cool and untouchable behind glass. So pretty, so desirable, so unbreakable despite all the pressure they put on it. She used to wonder, occasionally as a child when she wasn’t trying to distance herself entirely, what it was like to be a jewel. What it was like to be untouchable, distant and silent and unable to take even a scratch. 

She knows now.

The glass is easy enough to shatter, a quick tap and a sudden grab like nobody cares for the simple rule of Ockham’s Razor. A pity, it was always her favourite part of the odd classes on Philosophy she was forced to take. The alarms sound, but she pays them no mind. Simply scoops up the diamond into her grasp and strolls away. She knows every police route, has studied every cop, has _theories_ about the ever so mysterious girl behind the red flash. They think, with precious certainty, that they can catch her-

_Heh_.

She grins.

She _grins_.

 

\--

 

She killed her first man several months after her fourth successful robbery. It was quick, efficient. One shot to the head, before he had the chance to even open his mouth, and his body left crumpled on the floor. A bit of blood underneath him, trickling into the ground, but little else – the perfect job, no clues and no prints and absolutely nothing to cause a mess.

She returned to her apartment, a small place where nobody knew her real name, afterwards. Sat down, on an old sofa that’d been there when she first arrived, and stared thoughtfully into space for a while. There was no broken feeling, no jagged edge. There was only cold certainty, a sense of soft pleasure that she quickly squashed. She considered smiling, maybe even opening the one bottle of wine she had, but in the end dismissed the thought – just kept sitting there, staring into space.

Leslie called just after seven, voice harried but oddly relieved despite all that. She listened to the news of their father’s death dispassionately, expressed a brief condolence and hung up. The water in her apartment was perennially ice cold, but she went to take a shower anyway. It seemed fitting.

She allowed a small quirk of her lips, as the water spiralled down the drain.

 

\--

 

A train isn’t the best getaway vehicle, she far prefers the easy anonymity of sliding a hood over her head and slipping into the crowd, but it works. You can fade away on a train, hide in the mass of humanity so thoroughly that nobody can find you. You can become a different person, go to a different place, leave everything far behind. She’s heard stories, numerous stories, of people who do just that – who step on a train one day, and disappear so thoroughly that nobody ever hears from them again. Start all over, in an entirely new place.

She can believe them, every time she gets on a train. She can almost understand them, every time she watches the scenery stretching steadily away outside.

She smiles, cocks her gun, feels perfectly comfortable in her skin.

_Almost_ is the key word.

 

\--

 

She keeps growing in stature, she keeps growing in size. Within five years everybody on the underbelly of Central City knows her name, within ten everybody fears it. She steals a million, a rare gold statue, a billion, the last copy of an old leather-bound text. She never allows her hair to grow beyond her ears, wears sharp suits and refuses to buy make up. She becomes respected, known, _powerful_.

…But yet there is still human error, still the slightest chance that something might go wrong and knock her off her perch.

And then, one day in the coldest October recorded in Central City, she hears news of a diamond. A van. A pack of guards and an easy shot. And knows, somewhere deep in her heart, that she’s never going to have to fear ever again.

 

\--

 

The Flash, up close and pinned to the ground by pain, is less of a threat than her dancing monkeys imagined her to be. She’s bony, vaguely pretty behind her mask, _hilarious_ in her red costume so very clingy. Her chest heaves from the exertion, as she stares up with defiant eyes – a brave girl, a probably stalwart ally if she ever chose to use her mysterious powers to their full extent.

Heh.

She’s watched enough cop shows, enough superhero movies on various buzzing televisions in various low-end dives, to have patience for the ‘wooing to the dark side’ narrative. She only smiles again, grins again, instead – lowers her gun just slightly and crouches down until they’re staring into each other’s eyes. Close enough for a kiss, she’s certainly pretty enough.

…But, then, she’s also had enough of the ‘dark seduction’ narrative. It’s so dull, so pointless, so hopelessly doomed to end in cliché. She sighs, at the thought of it, shakes her head. This close she can see the girl’s eyes fluttering, the girl’s pale skin heating, the jump of her pulse in her neck. It’s intoxicating, the amount of power she has.

“I should thank you.”

The amount of power she’s always had.

“You forced me to up my game.”

The amount of power that’s never going to be taken away from her, now that she’s got her gun in hand and the sharpness of this Flash to keep her mind firmly upon my job.

“It’s almost a pity that you’re getting in the way of it-“

She grins one last time, savage at the thought, and raises her gun. The Flash’s eyes widen, the Flash’s pulse jumps, the _Flash_ opens her mouth to damn her straight to hell or heck or whatever charming notion this little girl has about where bad people go to be inevitably punished-

“Drop the weapon!”

…Well, nothing can be _perfect_.

 

\--

 

Leonora Snart first met the Flash at exactly noon on the 28th of October. It was an otherwise ordinary day, a peaceful day with her on top of the world and her dancing monkeys scuttling around underneath her – calm, boring, ordinary in a way that she’s become used to over the years.

The monkeys fell to terror when the Flash appeared, their eyes met – just briefly – and she suddenly knew that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

A new day one, in a way.


End file.
